“Never mind. These roots are fine.” He laid three more pieces of wood that had been drying on the flames, then began to sharpen the head of his broken spear with a round stone. He could not get over the strange pleasure of having two arms that did not hurt.
“Tell me another tale,” Barrick said after a while. “What happened to Crooked after he threw the gods into his grandmother’s lands?”
“Great-grandmother’s,” the raven said, looking around as though something else toothsome might be crawling by. “It were his great-grandmother, Emptiness. She taught Crooked all her tricks of coming and going.”
Find Crooked’s Hall, the Sleepers had told him. Crooked’s Hall, Crooked’s roads, Crooked’s doorway—did they actually expect Barrick to travel as the gods traveled? “So what happened? Did he become the king of the gods?” But Crooked, who until now had always been Kupilas as far as Barrick knew, was just a minor god, wasn’t he? The Book of the Trigon talked of Kupilas only as the clever patron of blacksmiths and engineers. And physicians, he remembered. Chaven had a statue of him in his house. “What happened after he killed Kernios?”
“Is us a Night Man, full of secrets?” the bird said with a touch of indignation. “Do us know all the Firstborn know? Anyroad, Crooked didn’t kill nobody—he threw the Earthlord and them others into the place where they sleeps forever.”
“But what happened to Kupilas? To Crooked? What happened to him?”
Skurn shrugged, a motion where he lifted his feathers in a ruff around his neck and wiggled his head. “Don’t know. Him were hurt bad by Earthlord’s spear. Dying, some say. Don’t know any more of the story, us. Mam never told it.”
And Barrick had to be content with that.
He was half asleep and drifting when he felt something poking at his hand, something sharp and hard. A beak.
“Hist!” The raven crouched beside him, spotted feathers all a-prickle so that he looked more hedgehog than bird. “I hear somewhat…”
Barrick sat up straight but stayed silent, listening. He gradually became aware that something sharp was poking into the back of his neck, and this time it wasn’t Skurn. He swatted at it but could not dislodge the painful thing from his skin. An instant later something else dropped down from the branches and caught the meat of his right arm—a thorny branch, bent like a hook, on the end of a strand of pale silk.
Before he had time to think several more strands came whipping down from the shadows above him. A few only flailed past him and then snapped away, but two more caught in his ragged clothes and pulled tight, like the thorny barbs already snagged in his neck and arm. Small, sharp pains bloomed all over him.
“They come, Master!” Skurn shrieked, flapping up into the air just as another barb shot out and swung through the spot where he had been. “Silkins!”
Now Barrick could see them, thin gray-white shapes scuttling through the upper branches above his head, casting down their weighted, thorn-hooked barbs to entangle him. He tried to reach into his belt for his broken spear but one of the creatures yanked on a silk strand hooked in his arm to keep him from reaching the weapon. Barrick grabbed the silk and pulled back hard until it slackened and he could grab the spearhead. He leaned out with his left hand and swept it up to cut through the strand imprisoning his arm, saying a silent prayer of thanks he had sharpened the edge. It took longer to work loose the thorny branch in his neck, and when he brought his hand away his fingers were smeared with blood.
Two of the maggoty things came tumbling out of the trees, silent as ghosts in the twilight, swinging their silks like horse-trappers as the dark wet spots of their eyes gleamed with reflected twilight. Barrick ducked under a flailing silk rope and felt the barbed hooks catch and tear at his scalp. He tore them loose from his head just as the creature leaped forward. Its strange, boneless limbs folded around him, and although it weighed little, the force was still enough to knock him off his feet. He fell and rolled, the silkin clinging to him until they both tumbled to a stop, Barrick’s right arm pinned beneath his own body. A strand whipped around his neck and pulled tight. For a moment, with only his useless left arm free, he knew he would die.
But his left arm wasn’t useless any longer. He reached up and caught the strange, slippery-but-sticky thing on his back and dug in his fingers. The strand around his neck tightened for a moment, but then he had tugged the thing loose and dragged it down onto the muddy forest floor.
I’m strong! He could have shouted it—he could feel it in him like a joyful flame. Strong!
Barrick was not able to get a solid grip on his attacker but as it rose up into a crouch he lunged forward and shoved the creature backward into the campfire even as another pale, half-human figure leaped down onto his back.
A horrible, whistling shriek went up from the one that had stumbled into the fire. The burning silkin staggered out of the firepit, pale yellow flames running up its legs and torso, the blackness beneath its mummifying threads beginning to ooze and bubble as the fire took it. Within a few heartbeats it was blazing like a torch, filling the twilight with shrilling screams so high in pitch that Barrick could hardly hear them.
The way to survival suddenly seemed clear. He leaped toward the fire, dragging the second silkin with him, and grabbed a burning piece of wood. With the broken spear in one hand and the flaming brand in the other he turned on the silkin clinging to his ankles and shoved the fire into the creature’s featureless face until it sizzled and bubbled. Piping in agony, it pulled free of him and leaped away, blindly tearing at its own head before striking a tree trunk. It lay twitching for a moment, then crawled away into the undergrowth, rolling and lopsided as a drunkard.
Barrick grabbed the spearhead tight and beat his hand upon his breast. “Come on, then!” he shouted at the ghostly shapes still swarming in the trees above. “Come and get me!”
Two more jumped down, then a third. Skurn came out of nowhere and snatched with his talons at the one nearest Barrick, which gave him a moment to swipe the torch against it. He narrowly missed singeing the bird, who flapped up again, cawing in alarm. The silkin’s wrappings did not catch, but Barrick stabbed at it again with his blade and spilled its black ooze, then turned and shoved the flame up against the next one even as it lurched forward. For long moments he could not tell how many of the silkins surrounded him, or how he was faring, but he could smell the ghastly, salty stink of the things as they burned. He began to laugh as he slashed with spearhead and torch, striking at everything that moved. From the corner of his eye he saw Skurn beating his way up into the air, looking for safety. Barrick only laughed louder.
An hour might have passed, or only moments—Barrick couldn’t tell. The last moving silkin was at his feet, trying to hold in its slow-dripping innards where Barrick had slashed its belly wide open. In a fever of gleeful rage Barrick dropped his spear and grabbed at the creature’s head, his fingers compressing the silk-wrapped ball as if it were a rotten melon. He pulled it upright, then shoved the torch into its gaping, sticky eye.
“Die, you filthy thing!” He held it down with his foot until it was burning too hot to stand over it. Three more of the creatures lay motionless and oozing at his feet, and nothing else moved in the trees.
Barrick lifted his hands before him, staring. He had known he would win—he had known it! What a marvel it was to have two strong arms, to be like anyone else! He kicked the smoldering corpse of the silkin and turned his back on it.